Chapter Text
now
1497 DR
Astarion does not remember closing his eyes.
In fact, the last thing he remembers with any sort of clarity is screaming.
He had been out for the evening, just over the threshold of some Lower City dive, when suddenly there had been some great commotion in the street behind him, a mass of people pointing up at the sky, screaming and shouting and pushing past one another to run–
There had barely been time to turn and see a fleeting impression of something black and hulking, screeching through the air, and then a cold sensation in the middle of his chest, an odd feeling of floating, and – blackness.
But he is not in the street any longer. Now he is lying down, with his eyes closed, somewhere…soft?
Astarion opens his eyes to a dimly lit, unfamiliar room. A bedroom, by all appearances, hung with drapes and tapestries in rich blue and purple hues. Clearly, this is no tavern bunkroom, but neither is it any of the rooms in Cazador’s palace. The soft place he is laying is a bed, plush and comfortable, covered with several layers of blankets and a large collection of embroidered pillows.
Someone has draped a woolen blanket over him, too.
Upon further inspection of the room, Astarion is quite certain that this is no inn or tavern – the place looks too lived-in for that. Towering shelves, full to bursting with books, scrolls, and knickknacks, line the room’s east wall. A very handsome rosewood desk is tucked into one corner across from the bed. In the other corner, a large mahogany wardrobe, its doors decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl designs, has been left ajar. Someone’s clothes, hung up inside, are visible through the open door.
“Hello?” He finds that his voice produces an echo, bouncing off the stone. The room is positively cavernous, with a high ceiling that comes to a point in the center of the space. No one responds, though. The only noise is that of guttering candles, which flicker in a number of dishes and candelabras dotted haphazardly around the room.
There is no smell of blood here, either; no faint rhythm of the pulse of thinking creatures, which in any place occupied by humanoids is usually such an omnipresent, forbidden scent that he can scarcely ignore it.
Still, Astarion tries one more time – adding a thick layer of syrupy sweetness to his voice, just on the off-chance that he needs it. “Is there anyone there?”
He doesn’t remember who brought him here, after all. And whoever they were, they’ve changed his clothes. Astarion’s threadbare, painstakingly maintained doublet and breeches are missing, replaced with a soft, well-made white shirt and a pair of black trousers that he’s never seen before. His familiar, well-worn leather boots are gone, too. Under the blanket, his feet are bare against the blue-dyed wool.
A tingling sensation – not panic, not quite, but the cold, swooping feeling that comes in anticipation of pain – begins to creep up Astarion’s spine.
He finds the door of the room unlocked. It leads out to a corridor, once again unfamiliar, cluttered with shelves, cabinets, and wall hangings. Daylight drifts in through a number of windows; Astarion deftly maneuvers around the shafts of light, in an effort not to add burns to the list of things that are unpleasant about this whole experience.
One side of the hallway is covered in paintings, mostly unfamiliar humans in a variety of boring, nondescript poses. The other is lined with display cases in a variety of shapes and sizes. As he creeps through the hall, always on alert for any sounds of movement, he still hears nothing, smells nothing, not even the blood of vermin skittering in the walls. The only thing he becomes aware of is the vague presence of magic.
Even Astarion, novice that he is – a bit of fire is all he can produce, a vestige of a life lived so long ago that he cannot remember when he’d learned the spell – can feel the magic in this place. At the end of the hall, it is especially obvious. Here, there are a collection of long, thin, glass-fronted cabinets, so suffused with magic that he can almost smell it emanating from them.
As he moves past the cases, a glance inside reveals staves, the kind a wizard might carry. Two are made of wood, with large, softly glowing gems set into the tops, and the third–
Astarion finds himself rooted to the spot in front of the last display case, bile rising in his throat as a fresh wave of dread sets in.
Cazador’s staff glares at him from within the case. The golden bat’s ruby-pinprick eyes seem to pierce through the glass, red-hot needles driven straight into his flesh. There is a sharp, phantom pain of sense-memory–
Throbbing agony in his right hand, where the sharp point of the end of the staff pins him to the floor of the ballroom like a butterfly to a card. Cazador is conducting business with some like-minded patriar or another. He has been kneeling on the marble so long that the pool of blood under his hand is beginning to dry, flaking away at the edges of the stain like peeling paint. Cazador’s fingers are carding absently through Astarion’s hair–
But this is not the Szarr palace, and Cazador does not often part with Woe, except on occasions where it would be gauche to be seen so visibly armed.
Where in all the Hells is he?
---
Astarion winds his way through two more corridors, in which there are entrances to three more empty guest rooms, a lavatory, a meticulously organized storage closet, and what appears to be a very strangely appointed kitchen.
The third corridor has only one outlet. A large, open archway covered in runic symbols – whether decorative or functional, Astarion has no idea – through which there drifted both the faint sound of voices and a low humming noise.
Astarion places himself at the edge of the archway, doing his best to remain hidden while peering inside. From this vantage point, he can see that it appears to be a workroom or laboratory of some kind; in the center of a large, circular space lined with bookshelves, there is a half-circle of worktables, upon which there are a great many glass flasks and alembics. Tottering piles of books are dotted precariously over the tables, like trees in an alchemical forest. Hovering blue balls of mage-light drift throughout the space, casting everything within in a soft blue glow.
Two figures are standing in front of the worktables – on the left, a woman, probably an elf, judging by the one pointed ear Astarion can see peeking out from a fall of auburn hair. A sparkling constellation of silver hoops and jeweled earrings runs up and down the curve of that ear.
Next to the glittering woman stands a human – probably male, going by the deeper voice, and probably of the arcane persuasion, judging by the robes, and the staff he is holding in one hand. The space is quiet enough for Astarion to make out snatches of what they are saying, as they converse in a low tone.
“There isn’t much for it but to wait, I’m afraid,” the man says. “I’ve already Sent to Shadowheart, but she said she’d need to see him in person to know more. Halsin is tied up in some sort of druid politicking with the Emerald Enclave, but he did offer to come as soon as it’s resolved, if we need him.”
The elf wrinkles her nose, dramatically enough that Astarion can see it from his place in the doorway. “I wish I was better at healing magic. Cuts and bruises I can do, but this is beyond me.”
“You’re in good company, then,” the man says to her, in a gentle, teasing sort of voice. “I’ve never been any good at it either.” It sounds fond, and is clearly received in kind – the woman gently punches the wizard in the arm, then says something Astarion can’t quite make out in a low, warm undertone.
He tries to assess the situation, to plot out a course of action vis-à-vis how he ought to approach these two. They’re familiar with one another – master and apprentice, possibly? He isn’t sure how such things work, between wizards. Is this a level of familiarity that is commonly tolerated? Are they friends, instead, or lovers?
Again, Astarion wonders – where is he? And why?
A wizard’s tower, possibly – no, probably. The smell of magic he’d caught a whiff of back in the corridors is so strong here that it’s almost physical, a heady feeling of power that hangs intangibly in the air. What’s more, this must be the residence of a wizard powerful enough to either steal or bargain for one of Cazador’s most prized possessions. Gaudy, ugly fucking thing that the staff is, Cazador has carried it with him nearly everywhere for over two hundred years.
Has Astarion himself been traded away? Part of the bargain, or on loan to this mysterious wizard and his little friend?
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d been lent out, as it were – but the thought still makes disgust roil in Astarion’s gut. He fades back into the shadow of the archway a bit more, pressing himself up against the wall of the corridor, then looks across at the opposite wall.
This wall is covered in a collage of tapestries – mostly landscapes and artistic depictions of dragons – and ornamental mirrors. There must be a painting thrown in there, though, because one of the frames contains the image of an elf, with white curls and a matching white shirt–
Recognition of something long-buried twinges in Astarion’s mind, and something inside his chest seizes. A high-pitched sound roars in his ears, almost like the buzz of an insect. He moves an arm, experimentally.
The elf in the painting – no, the mirror – moves his arm as well.
Astarion stumbles, all the practiced grace he usually prides himself on suddenly deserting him. The elf in the mirror, which Astarion cannot tear his eyes from, stumbles as well, right into a large candelabra next to them in the hall. There is an enormously large clattering sound as the iron stand falls over, sending wax and guttering candles scattering over the floor.
A sharp, incandescent surge of something between elation and panic slams into him, a realization thump-thump-thumping against the inside of Astarion’s chest with all the force of a charging owlbear.
His heart is beating.
There is a commotion, somewhere in his vicinity. There are words spoken – to him, he thinks – but they are unintelligible, Astarion’s brain too hazy to make them out. Dimly, he becomes aware that the elven woman he’d seen before is kneeling in front of him, close enough to touch him but hesitating from doing so.
“Astarion,” she says, in a careful, measured sort of voice – not patronizing, which he appreciates, but not without softness, either. “Are you all right?”
He looks up to meet her eyes and the woman starts, for some reason, as soon as their gazes meet. She draws in a harsh, punched-out breath and sits back on her heels. “Gods above and below,” she breathes. “Did it – did it really work?”
“Did what work?” Astarion grits out through his teeth, still clutching at his chest, as though the heart beating wildly, impossibly inside of it might somehow escape if he moves his hand away. “What in all nine of the fucking Hells did you people do to me?”
“Oh dear,” the wizard says softly, from somewhere just out of Astarion’s narrowed field of vision. “That sounds…less than promising.”
The woman schools her face into impassivity, a mask that Astarion recognizes all too well sliding over her expressive features, muting them. “Astarion,” she asks, in a careful, neutral tone, “Do you know where you are?”
When he doesn’t immediately respond, she asks, in a voice so low it is almost a whisper, “Do you know who I am?”
He looks up and searches the woman’s face, so much easier to see now that she is directly in front of him, crouched down on the floor and at his level. Dimly, he is aware of the wizard summoning his floating magelights to hover around their little tête-à-tête, which throws the woman’s face into the dim blue-white light of reflected magic.
Her face is small and sharp, with intense little eyebrows and a freckle-dusted nose that is currently wrinkled in – anger? worry? – Astarion isn’t sure.
All the faces of the last two centuries have slowly bled into one another, a muddled oil painting of features that Astarion can occasionally coalesce into a clearer picture, if he tries. For a moment, there is a hint of something familiar, just at the edges of his memory, but as soon as he reaches for it, it drifts away.
“Sorry, darling, but lovely as you are–” the words come out harsh and breathless, absent any of the desperate flattery he’d been going for, “your name’s escaping me just now.”
Astarion realizes that his chest is aching.
This all feels like – like a trap. Astarion can feel the jaws of it closing shut around him. Surely, any minute now Cazador will appear, curling his way around the threshold of the room like a fucking snake, snatching away any glimmer of hope, just like he always does. This will have all been a ploy, a test of Astarion’s obedience, one he will have failed in some way, and Cazador will take that failure out of his back in blood–
The woman takes in a harsh, sharp breath of her own, and an expression that Astarion cannot parse – shock, possibly, or fear – passes over her face before she says, insistently, “Astarion, you have to breathe.”
Of course he doesn’t. He hasn’t needed to breathe in almost two hundred years. It’s a recreational activity he’s used to pass the time, on occasion, but he doesn’t need it.
His chest is burning, now. Astarion sees spots at the edges of his vision. The woman is still speaking, saying something in an increasingly agitated tone, but it sounds as though he is hearing her from the bottom of a lake, her voice muffled, far away.
“Gale, how do I make him fucking breathe–”
The wizard – Gale – sputters, sounding harried, panicked. Arcane light suffuses the air around Astarion – but a soft pink, this time, rather than the magelights’ blue. The woman lays a hand on his shoulder, feather-light. He flinches away from it anyways.
She whispers, “I’m so sorry,” and a wave of cool, compelling magic washes over Astarion. The panic falls away immediately, sloughing off like shed skin from a snake. The jagged edges of his emotions round off, still present but dulled, easier to process.
Astarion breathes.
He realizes, belatedly, that he has of course been breathing ever since he opened his eyes – there is a reason the phrase is as easy as breathing – without realizing it. But now that he is aware of the process, of the pressing need to actively pull air into his lungs, it feels astonishing. He needs to breathe, and it is freeing and constricting all at once.
Why, he thinks, then realizes he is saying it aloud, in a strangled, hoarse voice that hardly sounds like his own. Why, what, how–
“Astarion?” The elf woman is still speaking to him, but he only catches one word out of every three. It seems like she is saying his name, mostly, as the punctuation in a series of questions that he cannot grasp.
Gale continues to hover above them, saying something that Astarion isn’t paying attention to. His vision has narrowed to that which is immediately in front of him – which, for now, is mostly the woman’s face. She has freckles, hundreds of them, dusted over her nose and cheeks. He attempts to focus on connecting the dots, one to another to another, a repetitive mental task to rearrange his scattered thoughts.
Astarion cannot smell her blood. Her neck is right in front of him, inches from his face, and he cannot smell what should be the rich, all-consuming scent of the blood in her veins – instead, there is just a hint of pine sap, and maybe something floral. Over the woman’s shoulder, he can still see the figure of the white-haired elf in the mirror, half-collapsed on the floor, and his eyes are green–
The woman starts to repeat his name, but before she can finish, Astarion’s eyes fall shut again.